Field of The Invention
The present invention is an improved piling hammer, such as may be used for driving load-bearing piles into the ground.
Conventionally, piling hammers are fairly crude devices, sometimes consisting of little more than a heavy weight which is lifted by a crane and dropped repeatedly upon the upper end of a pile or upon an anvil supported upon the upper end of a pile. A cushion may be interposed between the anvil and the hammer in order to modify the stresses created in the pile as a result of the impact of the hammer. Thus a block of wood has been used for this latter purpose and more recently it has been proposed to interpose a cushion of hydraulic liquid between the hammer and an anvil. However the basic method of operation, that is lifting and dropping the hammer using a crane or similar lifting device, has continued to be used unchanged and it is therefore invariably necessary to make suitable lifting equipment available on site.